When they first came on the scene in 2005 as Mother (before a necessitated 2007 name change), their syncopated boy/girl harmonies made them an indie-rock fusion between Scissor Sisters and The Pixies, with big swelling choruses that shifted between funk and twangy New Pornographers' power pop. That sound made them a buzz band, one now popular enough to headline Wednesday's Canadian Music Week show at the Phoenix — yet on this year's Eureka, out March 15, they sound like Cake and The Beta Band thrown in a blender, teetering on the dark edge of industrial goth rock.

And yet, their strongest suit might be that unknown image. With a big sound that's evolving and a stage chemistry that has nothing to do with sexual tension (guitarist Ryan Guldemond and keyboardist Molly Guldemond are siblings, backed by pals Jasmin Parkin on keyboard, Ali Siadat on drums and Jeremy Page on bass), Mother Mother want to be just about the music.

“I don't think the public has enough of an idea about our persona to form any ideas or misconceptions,” says frontman and chief songwriter Ryan Guldemond, calling from a rest stop somewhere in the snowy North Dakota flatlands.

“And I'm certainly not in touch with it at all. I guess if anything, I would like to keep our persona more musical. And if you think that's boring, consider this: what if the music wasn't boring?”

Guldemond says that each album allows the band to flirt with the extremes of their capabilities. While the tracks on 2007's Touch Up and 2008's O My Heart were often twangy, cynical stories about the disenfranchised with guttural Pixies basslines, Eureka sees the band evolving into orchestral harmonies and hip hop-influenced power ballads, as if Adam Lambert had joined The Dirty Projectors.

Guldemond likes to think of his songs as people. Mother Mother's stunning new single with a radio-friendly heavy drum sound, “The Stand” is the “mouthy malcontent” — wildly spinning between contempt and empathy for others, thanks to a shout-aloud coda that maintains “everyone's f--ked and they don't even know.”

“Never do I try to send a message,” jokes the songwriter. “Being a musician, you are forced to interpret what you do mostly in retrospect, so obviously you can't plead ignorance all the time. I think the opening song speaks to that feeling where the romance has died, in any sort of relationship . . .

“It's pretty easy to be cynical in this house of horrors they call life. But it's also easy to be in awe of its beauty.”

Having played with headliners including K'naan and Pearl Jam and at last year's Vancouver Olympics, Guldemond says his band is ambitious but without a set course. Years of sacrifice and living out of their van have poised for a breakthrough, as long as they don't break down. And they can't take every bit of their old sounds with them.

“Songs have their own quirks and tendencies and charms, and their own difficulties,” explains Guldemond. “Sometimes you have to let them be in charge for the duration of the relationship.

“And sometimes you end up severing the ties, like, ‘Okay song, I'm done with you. We're not going to play you anymore. Our time has come to an end.'

“In Mother Mother, we're all pretty different people but I would say that we work well together. If a bunch of people get into something and make sacrifices for it to do well, it should become a thing you share . . . because they're just songs at the end of the day. Weird little bundles of abstract energy.”

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